Information School News

MA Library & Information Services Management student Wafa shares her experiences from the LILAC Conference 2024. I was fortunate to receive one of two #LILAC24 Conference bursaries that took place in Leeds, generously provided by the wonderful Information School ! I always make the most of ‘library world’ events, but this was by far the most enlightening and thought-provoking conference I have ever attended. It was my first visit to Leeds, and I made the most of it. I joined the local library (housed in a beautiful Grade II listed building), took a late-night stroll around town, and visited the grand mosque, where I happily stumbled across adorable bunnies in the Leeds University Eco Garden! The city is filled with culture and numerous higher education institutions, making it an excellent choice for a conference focused on information literacy.  Top Left: Mila the Media and Information Literacy Alliance turtle crocheted by Eva Garcia Grau  Top Right: Me and my library car...

 I was absolutely delighted to receive a bursary place to attend FestivIL by LILAC. I have just finished my first year of the distance learning Library and Information Services Management course. The module I enjoyed the most was Information Literacy and I was excited to learn more about the best practices from experienced information professionals at FestivIL. Day One After a shaky start with Zoom (it had to do an update just before the conference started!), I was able to log into the Welcome session. In order to encourage conversation and networking at a virtual event, it was explained how you could attend two campfire conversations a day. Campfire conversations involved being randomly allocated into a breakout room where you could talk to other delegates. I decided to give it a try and enjoyed my first session so much, I opted to join for each campfire conversation. In each session, I felt that I could reflect on the conference and share my experience.  Emily Drabinski’s Ma...

This year’s LILAC conference was shifted online in the form of the condensed LILAC FestivIL situated over three half days on the afternoon of 6th July, the morning 7th July and the afternoon 8th July. LILAC is an annual conference organised by CILIP's Information Literacy Group and covers all aspects of information literacy. Double lucky for me, as well being online (accessible even from my Dubai location), I was offered the opportunity to virtually attend assisted by a Sheffield iSchool bursary. This was not my first time attending LILAC, and although the programme was compressed, as usual it delivered. Given the enforced deprivation of social connection during the global pandemic, the well-considered conference theme was community. This was echoed and reinforced by the conference structure on each half-day, with two daily slots being dedicated to ‘Campfire Conversations’. These informal online spaces, facilitated by small breakout rooms, provided attendees a welcome opportunity t...

I recently had the opportunity to attend the information literacy (IL) conference organised by LILAC, called FestivIL. It was a three-day event jam-packed with lectures, interviews, and workshops of all kinds, and even though it's a busy time of year, I'm really happy that I went. This year's conference took place online because of the pandemic, but I think the organisers did a great job of making it as "normal" as they could. They even incorporated some asynchronicity by making the main stage speeches into Q&A sessions based on pre-recorded lecture videos, and I thought that worked really well. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend the second day due to a scheduling conflict (that day's events all took place in the morning, while the first and third days were in the afternoon), but I'd like to share my experience of the other two days. Day One I've never attended a professional conference before, and the first day was a whirlwind of ideas. Emily Dr...

CALC - Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference - May 2020 We are thrilled to sponsor the Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference on Wednesday, 13th May 2020. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, the conference will now be held online. Our sponsorship, along with sponsorship from CILIP's Community, Diversity and Equality Group, has meant that the conference is free to attend. The event, jointly-organised by one of our alumni, Michelle Bond, Academic Liaison Librarian, Coventry University and her colleague Darren Flynn. Places are limited to 80   please click here to register.

Global Media and Information Literacy week   is a UNESCO-sponsored annual celebration of media and Information Literacy, with events organised around the world. This year’s theme is Media and Information Literate Citizens: Informed, Engaged, Empowered and the centre for Information Literacy Research (Information School, University of Sheffield)  is responding with events and activities on this theme --------------------------------------------------------- Free bite-sized webinar for Global Media and Information literacy Week: Dr Pamela McKinney: The Information literacy of food and activity logging in three communities. 11-11.30am UK time, Thursday 24 October 2019 (check the time in your country at https://tinyurl.com/globalmila ) To join the webinar go to https://tinyurl.com/globalmilabb just before the webinar start time. It uses Blackboard Collaborate (see here  for details on how to use it). You do not have to register for the webinar in advance, but i...

Now the dust has cleared from the 2019 iSchool Conference, we’ve had a break and come up with some interesting findings from the presentations at the event. The conference boasted a wide range of disciplines that PhD students from the iSchool are researching. The day kicked off purely with quantitative research, followed by mixed methods methodologies and ending with some thought-provoking qualitative research presentations. Here are our top highlights: Recommendation Systems in Drug Design The morning began with the first presentation by Gianmarco Ghiandoni, a 3rd year PhD student in the Cheminformatics research group . The study looks at De Novo design, a branch of cheminformatics dealing with the design of molecular structures. Gianmarco adapted  methods that are widely applied for recommendation purposes on human data - for example by companies such as Google, Amazon, or Netflix - to the computational drug design processes, where chemical and biological data are mai...

Two weeks on from #CILIPconf2019 has allowed me plenty of time to reflect on what I learnt over the two whirlwind days. Firstly, if you ever have the opportunity to go… GO! It is friendly and gives you a real taste of a variety of sectors of the profession and creates an atmosphere that is sure to inspire information professionals to go out and make a difference. One of the stand out things I have taken away from the conference was its focus on equality and diversity and that librarianship is overwhelming white… 97% of information professionals in the UK identify as white which is not representative of our society which is 88% (CILIP, 2019).  In her keynote speech, Hong-Anh Nguyen (@DeweyDecibelle) used a quotation from Ed Yong: “I knew that I care about equality so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem.  I assumed that my passive concern would be enough.  Passive concern never is.” This struck a chord with me – equality is important to me –...